


a life in portraits

by Rehearsal_Dweller



Series: For Even a Day [6]
Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: M/M, Royalty AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:48:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24954826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rehearsal_Dweller/pseuds/Rehearsal_Dweller
Summary: The first time Jack draws Davey, they’re six years old.
Relationships: David Jacobs/Jack Kelly, Jack Kelly/Katherine Plumber
Series: For Even a Day [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1705639
Comments: 27
Kudos: 76





	a life in portraits

**Author's Note:**

> This is the Davey companion piece to that Jack POV I did the other day, because I like pain apparently.

The first time Jack draws Davey, they’re six years old. Even at six, Jack is already starting to show promise as an artist.

For the first time in Davey’s young life there’s a fuzzy feeling in his chest as he watches the other boy draw. He thinks, at the time, that he must be coming down with something. That’s the only explanation he can think of.

Jack has this look in his eye, as he’s trying to capture Davey’s appearance. Like he can see into Davey, somehow, and maybe capture a little bit of his soul on paper.

That piece of his soul is a little shaky and uncontrolled, but recognizable as Davey which is honestly remarkable.

“Do you want it?” Jack asks when he’s done.

Davey wrinkles his nose. “It’s _me_. That’s weird.”

“Lotsa people keep pictures of themselves,” says Jack. “You been in the Manhattan room?”

“Yeah, okay,” Davey says, laughing. “Fine, I’ll keep it. But only ‘cause you made it. It’s pretty.”

“You’re pretty.”

“You’re silly, Jackie.”

\--

By the time Kitty moves to Manhattan Castle, Davey is firmly established as Jack’s favorite thing to draw. That doesn’t stop Jack from drawing other people, but Davey can see that his focus is wavering – he sat down to draw Kitty for the first time, and his gaze keeps wandering over to Davey.

“Hey, Davey?” Sarah says, watching Jack and Kitty with her head on Davey’s shoulder. “What do you think it feels like to be in love?”

Davey hums. “I don’t know. We’re nine, Sarah, we’re too young to know.”

“That’s no fun,” says Sarah. “Be fun, Davey. What would you say if Jack asked you?”

“Why do you think I’d say something different to Jack?” asks Davey.

“Because you play along with Jack,” Sarah says, shrugging. “So. What do you think it feels like to be in love?”

Davey thinks for a moment, watching Jack draw. Jack looks over just then, and grins with his gappy smile – he’s missing side teeth, but Jack always smiles so wide that he shows it off – and Davey tries to imagine what he’d say if it _were_ Jack who asked. “Fuzzy.”

\--

Jack just keeps getting better at art.

He still sketches pencil-and-paper whenever there’s a pencil and paper to hand, but he’s started painting recently and it’s _breathtaking_. And Davey would know, because it’s his breath being taken.

He’s decided that he loves watching Jack paint, but the problem is that Jack loves painting _Davey_. Davey doesn’t get to watch when Jack paints him, because Jack wants to look at him when he’s painting. So he’d rather Jack paint landscapes, because when Jack paints landscapes he lets Davey perch just behind him on a chair and watch it come together.

Jack is painting Davey now, looking up from his canvas periodically to stare into Davey with his tongue poking out between his lips.

Lately, Jack himself has been taking Davey’s breath away, too.

“What’cha lookin’ at, Davey?” Jack asks.

“You look silly with your tongue out like that,” Davey says, looking away as a flush creeps up his cheeks.

“Helps me concentrate on capturin’ your pretty face,” Jack says. He barely even sounds like he’s teasing.

“Jack _ie_ ,” Davey says.

Jack just grins at him, then goes back to his painting.

They kiss for the first time in the dark of Jack’s bedroom that night.

\--

They’re thirteen the first time Jack calls him “Davey-mine,” unthinkingly, as he sketches Davey in the margins of his schoolwork.

Davey’s brain goes fuzzy for a moment, he’s sure he forgets to breathe. He gets it under control again before thirty seconds have passed but it happens.

He returns the sentiment a few days later, with a teasing, “You’re always drawing when you should be working, Jackie-mine. How are you going to function when you’re king?”

“That’s what I’ve got you for,” Jack replies, and Davey beams at him.

\--

Davey is fifteen when he realizes.

Somehow, Jack has just gotten better and better at looking straight into Davey’s soul, and he’s doing it right now. His eyes are boring into Davey, and he’s got a goofy grin on his face and oh, Davey is in love with him.

Wait.

Davey reels back his last few moments of thought – no, yeah, that happened. Jack is grinning at him, doing that thing where he makes Davey feel _seen_ in some oddly non-surface way, and Davey breathes and on the exhale realizes he is in love with Jack Manhattan Larkin. With _Prince Jack_. And the problem with that is that Jack is –

Jack is –

Well, what isn’t the problem with that, really.

The problem is that Jack is his best friend.

The problem is that Jack is the prince.

The problem is that Jack is betrothed, and maybe he doesn’t have feelings for Kitty now but people keep assuring him that he’ll _grow to love her._

The problem is that Jack touches Davey constantly, that they’ve stayed up all night kissing twice this week, and that if Davey pulls away Jack will know and also Davey will hate himself because he gravitates to Jack like he needs his touch to survive.

The problem is that Jack _knows_ Davey. Jack knows Davey better than anyone, even his siblings, and Jack will know something is wrong. And Jack will ask and Davey will tell him because he can’t keep fucking anything from Jack and Jack won’t feel the same and he’ll hate Davey forever.

The problem, Davey thinks as he meets Jack’s eye and tries to match his smile, is that Jack probably loves Davey back.

\--

They are nineteen, and Jack isn’t paying attention. In all fairness, Davey isn’t paying much attention either. Queen Medda thought separating them would be enough to keep both of them focused, but now they’re facing each other and Davey can pull faces at Jack when he thinks other council members are being obnoxious, which is probably worse than letting them whisper.

Anyway Davey looks over at Jack to make a face, and sees that Jack – who has been sketching idly on his notepad – is looking back at him like he’s seen a ghost.

After the meeting adjourns, Davey catches Jack by the hand as he walks out. Jack is clutching the page he’d torn from his notepad and he still has that slightly haunted look in his eye.

“Jackie, are you alright?”

“Yeah,” says Jack. He’s pale and his breathing is uneven. “Davey, I love you.”

Not really what Davey expected, but not entirely unusual either. “Yeah, Jack. I love you, too. What’s –“

“No, Davey –“ Jack shakes his head. He drags Davey by their joined hands down the halls and up to his chambers, not saying a single word.

Then they’re standing in Jack’s sitting room, and Jack still isn’t saying anything. He drops the slightly crumpled paper onto a side table and Davey can see that it’s got a half-finished but recognizable sketch of himself scribbled on it.

“What’s wrong, Jack?” Davey asks, frowning.

“Davey, I _love you_ ,” Jack says again. He looks desperate for Davey to understand and -

“Oh.” Davey does understand. He doesn’t feel any better for it. “Oh, Jack. I love you.”

\--

The day before Jack marries Katherine, he spends with Davey. Specifically, he spends it painting, with Davey curled on a chair behind him.

They don’t talk about it.

(They have never talked about the reason they’re not talking about it, save the day that Jack so desperately confessed when they were nineteen. Even then, they hadn’t talked _about_ it, so much as said the words and wallowed a little in the tragedy of it.)

They talk about everything else, instead. They talk about Race’s latest designs, about Charlie’s growth spurt, about Sarah’s new education proposal, about Les’s last letter before he came home from school.

And all the while, Jack paints. He starts painting a stormy skied desert but, not for the first time, he begs Davey to sit for a portrait before too long. Davey gives into his pleading almost instantly, because he can not tell Jack no.

Davey still goes warm and fuzzy when Jack fixes him with that _look_ he gets when he’s painting. He’s almost sure it shows in his face – and Jack’s paintings of him always give away his heart, don’t they?

“What’cha thinkin’ about, Davey-mine?” Jack asks, meeting Davey’s eye around his easel.

_Being yours_ , Davey doesn’t say. “Just how much more fun this is when I can see what you’re doing.”

“I like painting you,” says Jack.

“I know,” says Davey.

“I wish –“

“I know.”

\--

Things change after Jack and Katherine get married. Not, like, actively or on purpose but –

They change.

Jack still draws and paints Davey, but less. That’s okay.

They don’t curl up together and hold on tight till the sun comes up anymore, because Jack spends his nights with Katherine. That’s –

That’s okay, too.

(They do still spend plenty of _social time_ together, engaging in activities that Jack should be more interested in doing with Kitty, but – well. That’s all it is, now.)

Davey throws himself into trying to make one of his setups work, fighting through unpleasant suitor after unpleasant suitor, getting steadily more frustrated and –

And –

Stars above, all Davey wants is to be left alone to pretend that none of this is happening, but when things go south with Lizzie – in full view of Race and Spot, of course, because nothing in Davey’s life could ever be truly private – he knows there’s no turning back. He can’t do this anymore.

He finds himself at Jack and Katherine’s door, then in Jack and Katherine’s arms, and falls asleep with his head on Jack’s chest and a conversation from their childhood echoing through his head.

_“Do royal advisors get married? In your stories?”_

_“Not usually.”_

_“Good. Then you can stay with me forever.”_

Jack convinces him – coerces him – to take the day off, and begs just like always to let him paint him. Davey, just like always, says yes.

Jack looks sad, even as he looks at Davey like he always does, working on the portrait. He shifts before too long into a landscape so Davey can watch him paint and sink into the soothing familiarity of it.

(There is familiarity in letting Jack paint him, too, but it isn’t always soothing.)

Eventually they find their way into each other’s arms and into Jack’s bed. They always do.

“Do you ever regret us?”

“That’s a loaded question, Jackie-mine.”

“Well, do you?”

“Yes.”


End file.
